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Pope Remarks and Muslim Reactions

In the middle of September, 2006 Pope Benedict of the Catholic Church made a speech at the University in Regensburg, Germany. The core of the speech has been

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, Sep 24 7:02 PM

In the middle of September, 2006 Pope Benedict of the
Catholic Church made a speech at the University in Regensburg,
Germany.
The core of the speech has been characterized as a criticism
of modern western civilization for committing itself too much to
reason and cutting God out of science and philosophy.
Ian Fisher of the New York Times said that Pope Benedict
started out `by recounting a conversation on the truths of
Christianity and Islam that took place between a 14th- century
Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian
scholar.'
Even the New York Times seems to have gotten the message
wrong that Pope Benedict was sending.
Pope Benedict did not start by recounting the conversation.
The quotation that caused the stir was far into the speech but that
is only a minor point.
He was speaking about how reason has polluted faith to such
an extent that the message of peace that Jesus brought was being
lost in modern society. In fact the speech contained elements of
his inaugural lecture at the University in Bonn from 1959.
It is a speech of love, the message of Jesus, the word of
God and of and for humanity.
The media reported on a reference to a statement made by
Emperor Manuel II Paleologus hundreds of years ago and sparked off a
bitter response from the Muslim community around the world.
I am going to begin this evening with a short history so
that we have a background for Emperor Paleologus.
The Fall of the Roman Empire took place over a long period
of time. During one period the Empire broke into two pieces. There
was the western empire which fragmented further into several
countries like France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal - et
cetera with a central church whose head of state was in Rome.
The Eastern Empire retained its government and shape but was
slowly over run by barbarians from the north and the Muslims from
the east who were considered savages at the time.
Eventually the capital of the Eastern Empire at Byzantium
was conquered and the Eastern Emperor, of which Manuel II was one of
the last, ceased to be a governing power. The Eastern Churches are
called Orthodox and range from the Greek Orthodox to the Russian
Orthodox with other churches formed from what were formerly mainly
Roman provinces.
Each of these orthodox churches has a different internal
governing system and until Pope John Paul II made overtures they did
not even speak to the Catholic Church in Rome.
During the Fall of the Western Empire a pantheon of gods was
replaced by belief in the One True God. Much of the material from
that time was preserved and passed down through the ages to the
present day. Much of it was also destroyed.
Some of the most holy places in Rome to Catholics were once
the same places used to worship Apollo, Diana, Zeus and Hera. Those
are the ancient gods of Rome. Their statues were moved it of the
buildings and the interiors redesigned to reflect the Catholic
faith. A lot of this art is still in existence.
To the east of the Roman Empire - to the east of the Eastern
Empire in fact, was in ancient times a nation called the Parthian
Empire. After much fighting the Parthian Empire eventually ended up
as the Persian Empire.
What happened when Mohammad came along was more bitter,
divisive and destructive than the slow and thorough absorption of
the old Roman religions by the Catholic religion.
Mohammad declared a campaign of destruction. When the
Muslims entered Riyadh they attacked the pantheon of the Parthian or
Persian Empire. They destroyed every statue and image they found.
The priests were killed along with faithful trying to make a
defense. Families were destroyed, the city burned and all the
wealth and weapons taken for the continued fury of the spread of the
Muslim faith.
The result is that the Muslim faith seemingly has no
memory. There was a complete and willful break from the past which,
rather than supplanting what was before it replaced it with another
more insecure and fragile arrangement. Where local Parthian or
Persian tax payers used to collect money now armed priests called
Imams collected what is referred to as the `poor-tax' which finds
its way these days rarely to the tables of the poor and more often
to the makers of guns, rockets and mortars. Osama Bin Laden for
example had access to billions of dollars and rather than using it
for constructive projects he used it to attack the World Trade
Center in order to disrupt trade.
Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi
Arabia and other governments controlled in this way whine to the
west about helping the poor while they sit on oil, gold, silver, tin
and other natural resources controlled by a few religious leaders as
in Iran or by Kings and princes as in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan.
It was a terrible time and unlike the slow change that took
place in Rome it has never seemed to end. In fact the same behavior
that the early Muslims showed to the art and culture of their own
people was repeated when the Muslim Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed
the 18 story tall statues of Buddha with dynamite.
This sort of destructive, irresponsible behavior was echoed
again when a Danish cartoonist drew a caricature of Mohammed wearing
a bomb for a hat.
These are two well known incidents in modern times but the
destructive behavior has been repeated time and time again through
history. Muslims sometimes say it is to defend their faith but
lately it has started to seem a little like the fanaticism of men
like Billy Sunday and Billy Graham who pull an enemy out of the hat
so the donations of the faithful will keep pouring in.
The problem is that the violence that is unleashed through
the old interpretation of the Koran is extreme.
Now to return to modern times. What exactly did Pope
Benedict say?
Here it is. The Pope is referencing an edited text of
Emperor Paleologus's remarks :
"But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions,
developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.
Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment
accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns
to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on
the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these
words:
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there
you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached.
The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading
the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is
incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.
God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is
contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body.
Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well
and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince
a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any
kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....
The decisive statement in this argument against violent
conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary
to God's nature. ""

The sentence that drove the Muslim world into a blood frenzy
is : "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you
will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The press did not dwell on the next sentence which
reads, "The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why
spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of
the soul."

The response of the Muslim community was almost instant. As
if they had been sitting in wait for anything to set them off. If
their reaction had not been so violent, apparently unthinking and
illogical it might have been humorous.
But several people died apparently as a result of their
reaction.
The onus was put back on Pope Benedict and it was intimated
that his remarks caused the violence. I heard one radio talk show
host on a local religious radio station in Detroit talk about
the `behavior' of the Pope and yet she admitted that she had not
seen the text of the speech. She was acting just like the Muslim
fanatics that opposed him. The text was available online at that
time but this Christian fanatic decided to remark on items she did
not take the time to investigate.
The problem for the Muslim world is that even though he did
not intend to paint the modern Muslim religion as bloodthirsty and
violent the response and reaction from Muslim leaders around the
world can only lead a responsible, logical adult to conclude that
this may be so.

In the meantime the response from the Muslim world began to
deteriorate.

Here is what the Pope said in response, ""These were in fact
quotations from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my
personal thought. The true meaning of my address in its totality
was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great
mutual respect."

Following are some of the things that were said and done by
the Muslim community in response to Pope Benedict`s speech in
Regensburg. You can make your own decision about whether they
responded correctly or not. I do not feel that they did and that,
rather than proving what Pope Benedict had to say, they underscored
the words of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus himself.

Iraqis burned an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI during a
protest in Basra. Basra is a city that has seen thousands of
political and religious assassinations since the occupation of Iraq
began. The Shiites and Sunnis are slaughtering each other but took
a break to join together and burn a paper puppet of Pope Benedict.

The New York Times tells us that "an Iraqi group linked to
Al Qaeda posted a warning on a Web site threatening war
against "worshippers of the cross.""

Ayatollah Ali Khameni, the top Muslim in Iran, is reported
to have called Pope Benedict's remarks "the latest link" in
the "chain of conspiracy to set off a crusade."

A Turkish man with a fake gun attacked a Protestant church
in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

In Somalia, gunmen shot an Italian nun and her bodyguard to
death outside a children's hospital in the capital. It is not clear
whether the shooting of Leonella Sgorbati, 64, was related to the
papal controversy, but Somalian Islamic extremists had threatened to
attack Catholics.

Reuters news agency reported, "She was shot three times in
the back."
Reuters goes on to say, "There is a very high possibility
the people who killed her were angered by the Catholic Pope's recent
comments "

Somalia was recently taken over by a Muslim government whose
first actions were to disarm or kill anyone that opposed them. They
have maintained order with violence.

In Sudan the attacks on the Christians in Darfur by armed
agents of the Sudan government continue. In a weakly worded
statement Condoleeza Rice said that the violence in Darfur
is "getting worse".

The concept of spreading Islam by the sword is alive and
well in the 21st century.
The Islamic government in Sudan's north is pushing south
with guns and bombs. They are clearing out the Africans who have
lived there for thousands of years in order to sell oil contracts to
Communist Chinese and even European and American companies.
In Somalia the Muslims are killing anyone that opposes them
and replacing local governments with a government based on Muslim
law called Sharia.
In Afghanistan the Islamists continue to spread their
influence by killing anyone who opposes them.
Active cells of terrorists and Islamic preachers in Pakistan
continue to incite violence in western India, Afghanistan and
central Asia.
The western parts of Communist China are also feeling the
sting of this renewed military expansion.
All through north Africa, the shores of East Africa and even
eastern Europe Muslim extremists seemingly resort to violence first.
These are real expansions and they are not being addressed
by international diplomacy.

Indonesia, a major trading partner with the United States,
continues to be ruled by a military style government heavily steeped
in Muslim influence. Three apparently innocent Christians were
recently executed for anti-government activities just before the
Muslim holy days of Ramadan in what appears to be an insult to the
West in that the Muslim cleric and men who killed so many in a
bombing in Bali have still not been sentenced.
The executions were scheduled for early August, but were
postponed following an appeal by Pope Benedict. Then the scheduled
executions of the Bali bombers, who murdered 202 people, was also
postponed. They may have a new date set in October but there is no
telling with the Indonesian government.

Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, the second largest
Islamic organization in Indonesia said, "It is obvious from the
statements that the Pope doesn't have a correct understanding of
Islam. Whether the Pope apologizes or not, the Islamic community
should show that Islam is a religion of compassion."
Fauzan Al-Anshori, spokesman for the Indonesian Mujahideen
Council, said "Muslims can't eliminate jihad from the Islamic
discourse, the same way Christians can't do away with the doctrine
of Trinity,"

The Associate Press stated that "Al Qaeda in Iraq warned
Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that its war against Christianity and
the West will go on until Islam takes over the world "

Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia

The Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq released a statement
addressing the pope as "a cross-worshipper" and saying, "You and the
West are doomed, as you can see from the defeat in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. You infidels and despots, we
will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails
us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism,
when God's rule is established governing all people and nations."

Another Iraqi group said on the internet, "If the stupid pig
is prancing with his blasphemies in his house then let him wait for
the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock
on the walls of Rome."

In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, "Those
who benefit from the pope's comments and drive their own arrogant
policies should be targeted with attacks and protests."

Islamic Defenders' Front said in Jakarta, India said, "His
comments really hurt Muslims all over the world. We should remind
him not to say such things which can only fuel a holy war."

President Bush weight in and said that Pope Benedict was
sincere in his apology for comments on Islam that have sparked
outrage in the Muslim world. I can't figure out which side he is on
because according to the Catholic Church Pope Benedict did not
apologize. Bush was with the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time
so politics may be taken into account.

Another statement out of Iraq was, "We shall break the cross
and spill the wine."

In Palestine a church in Tulkarem was attacked with gasoline
bombs followed by an attempted attack on a church in Tubas, near
Jenin along with gasoline bomb attacks on three churches in Nablus,
as well as an attack on a church in Gaza.

In Turkey, a recipient of much American aid money, Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked Pope Benedict to apologize
for his "ugly, unfortunate statements."

In Morocco King Mohammed VI sent a written message to the
pope denouncing his "offending statements."

Pakistan's National Assembly voted unanimously a resolution
condemning the Pope Benedict's comments.
The Pakistani National Assembly wrote, "This statement has
hurt sentiments of the Muslims. This is also against the charter of
the United Nations. This house demands the Pope retract his remarks
in the interest of harmony among different religions of the world."

In New Delhi, India, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the chief cleric of
Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque said, "No Pope has ever tried
to attack the glory of Islam like this Pope. Muslims must respond
in a manner which forces the Pope to apologize."

Meanwhile, violence continued in Somalia where the Muslim
extremists attempted to assassinate the new President. The
President lived by 8 people including his brother were murdered.
The attack came as the President of Somalia has been trying to work
out an agreement to reign in the Conservative Council of Islamic
Courts which wants to run Somalia on Muslim Sharia law.

Protests occurred in South Asia and across Indonesia.

Muslims extremists said the pope's comments proved that the
West was in a war against Islam.

The Pakistani government made a big noise about Pope
Benedict's comments but they didn't say anything about the fact that
violence and religion don't mix. In fact, neither did the
Indonesians, Malaysians, Morrocans, Egyptians, Sudanese, Iraqis,
Iranians or any of the Muslim dominated governments.

To harken back to the past in Delhi, India in 1398 Chinggis
Khan invaded the city. He had Hindu and Muslim prisoners
separated. He then ordered all the non-Muslims to be killed. Over
100,000 Hindus were killed that day.

The battle between Buddhism and the Muslim religion which
caused the destruction of the statues in Afghanistan dates back to
the 1300's as well.

Pope's Speech from Regensburg :

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to stand and give a lecture
at this university podium once again. I think back to those years
when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began
teaching at the University of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of
the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various
chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense
there was much direct contact with students and in particular among
the professors themselves.
We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the
teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians,
philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two
theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus,
when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of
the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of
universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at
times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a
whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality
with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right
use of reason-- this reality became a lived experience.
The university was also very proud of its two theological
faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness
of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of
the whole of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could
share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a
whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of
reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a
colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it
had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That
even in the face of such radical skepticism it is still necessary
and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of
reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the
Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was
accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition
by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue
carried on-- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara-- by
the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated
Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of
both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this
dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402;
and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail
than the responses of the learned Persian.
The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith
contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with
the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly
to the relationship of the three Laws: the Old Testament, the New
Testament, and the Qur'an. In this lecture I would like to discuss
only one point-- itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself--
which, in the context of the issue of faith and reason, I found
interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my
reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the
emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor
must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in
religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed
was still powerless and under threat.
But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions,
developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.
Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment
accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns
to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on
the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these
words:
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there
you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached.
The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading
the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is
incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.
God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is
contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body.
Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well
and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince
a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any
kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....
The decisive statement in this argument against violent
conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary
to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the
emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement
is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely
transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories,
even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted
French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so
far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that
nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's
will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete
practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a
dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction
that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek
idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we
can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense
of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.
Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the
prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the
logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with
logos.
Logos means both reason and word-- a reason which is
creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.
John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and
in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical
faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the
logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.
The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought
did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the
roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with
him: Come over to Macedonia and help us! (cf. Acts 16:6-10)-- this
vision can be interpreted as a distillation of the intrinsic
necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek
inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for
some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning
bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with
their many names and declares simply that he is, is already presents
a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates's attempt to
vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old
Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new
maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel
now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of
heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the
words uttered at the burning bush: I am.
This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of
enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods
who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite
the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to
accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the
Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the
best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual
enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature.
Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old
Testament produced at Alexandria-- the Septuagint-- is more than a
simple (and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory)
translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness
and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one
which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for
the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith
and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine
enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith
and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to
faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is
contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle
Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis
between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with
the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose
with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim
that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the
realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the
opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to
positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even
lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to
truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted
that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an
authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain
eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.
As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always
insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit
and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which
unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the
point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God
does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a
sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the
God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and
continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love transcends
knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought
alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God
who is logos. Consequently, Christian worship is worship in harmony
with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek
philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only
from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that
of world history- it is an event which concerns us even today.
Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity,
despite its origins and some significant developments in the East,
finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We
can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with
the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and
remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms
an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call
for a dehellenization of Christianity- a call which has more and
more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the
modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the
program of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are
clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and
objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the
fundamental postulates of the Reformation in the 16th century.
Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers
thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned
by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on
an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as
a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching
philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other
hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found
in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from
another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to
become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to
set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this
program forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never
have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical
reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th centuries ushered
in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von
Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and
in the early years of my teaching, this program was highly
influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of
departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers
and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address
the issue. I will not repeat here what I said on that occasion, but
I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this
second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to
return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath
the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple
message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of
humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favor of
morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a
humanitarian moral message. The fundamental goal was to bring
Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it,
that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological
elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God.
In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New
Testament restored to theology its place within the university:
theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and
therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically
about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and
consequently it can take its rightful place within the university.
Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason,
classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime
further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This
modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis
between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis
confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it
presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic
rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works
and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the
Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other
hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes,
and here only the possibility of verification or falsification
through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight
between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift
from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J.
Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the
issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting
from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be
considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must
be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such
as history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, attempt to
conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point,
which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature
this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an
unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced
with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which
needs to be questioned.
We shall return to this problem later. In the meantime, it
must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain
theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing
Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say
more: it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the
specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the
questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within
the purview of collective reason as defined by "science" and must
thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then
decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable
in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the
sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and
religion lose their power to create a community and become a
completely personal matter.
This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see
from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which
necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of
religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an
ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology,
end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been
leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization,
which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with
cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis
with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary
inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The
latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of
the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to
inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is
not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New
Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek
spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament
developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early
Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures.
Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship
between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith
itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith
itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with
broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has
nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the
Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The
positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly:
we are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has
opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been
granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be
obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which
reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here
is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening
our concept of reason and its application.
While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity,
we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must
ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so
only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome
the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable,
and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense
theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-
ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline
and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry
into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of
cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western
world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms
of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's
profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from
the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound
convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which
relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of
entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have
attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically
Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond
itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.
Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the
rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our
spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given,
on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this
has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by
the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought: to
philosophy and theology.
For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology,
listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious
traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in
particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an
unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am
reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier
conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised,
and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone
became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of
his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this
way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer
a great loss".
The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the
questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great
harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and
not the denial of its grandeur  this is the program with which a
theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our
time. "Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature
of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of
God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great
logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the
dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task
of the university.

Koran Quotes

Chapter 8:12 " Verily I am with you; wherefore confirm those who
believe. I will cast a dread into the hearts of the unbelievers.
Therefore strike off their heads, and strike off all the ends of
their fingers."

Chapter 8:67 reads, "It hath not been granted unto any prophet, that
he should possess captives, until he hath made a great slaughter of
the infidels in the earth."

Chapter 9:123 reads, "O true believers, wage war against such of the
infidels as are near you; and let them find severity in you: and
know that God is with those who fear him."

"Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive),
and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush" (Sura 9.5).

"Those that make war against Allah and His apostle and spread
disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands
and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.
They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in
the hereafter." (Sura 5.33-34)

"Allah revealed His will to the angels, saying: 'I shall be with
you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the
hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very
tips of their fingers!' That was because they defied Allah and His
apostle. He that defies Allah and his apostle shall be sternly
punished by Allah." (Sura 8.12-13)

"In order that Allah may separate the pure from the impure, put all
the impure ones one on top of another in a heap and cast them into
hell. They will have been the ones to have lost." (Sura 8.37)

"Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your command, so
that you may strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy,
and others besides them who are unknown to you but known to Allah."
(Sura 8.60)

"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal
harshly with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate." (Sura
9.73)

"When We resolve to raze a city, We first give warning to those of
its people who live in comfort. If they persist in sin, judgement is
irrevocably passed, and We destroy it utterly." (Sura 17.16-17)

"When you meet the unbelievers in jihad, chop off their heads. And
when you have brought them low, bind your prisoners rigorously. Then
set them free or take ransom from them until the war is ended."
(Sura 47.4)

"Mohammed is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to
the unbelievers but merciful to one another." (Sura 48.29)
IV. Excerpts of Verses

"And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from
whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than
slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until
they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them;
such is the recompense of the unbelievers."

"Yea! if you remain patient and are on your guard, and they come
upon you in a headlong manner, your Lord will assist you with five
thousand of the havoc-making angels."

"Fight then in Allah's way...rouse the believers to ardor maybe
Allah will restrain the fighting of those who disbelieve... "

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle
and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they
should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should
be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned"

"...fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion
should be only for Allah "

"O Prophet! urge the believers to war; if there are twenty patient
ones of you they shall overcome two hundred, and if there are a
hundred of you they shall overcome a thousand of those who
disbelieve, because they are a people who do not understand ...if
there are a hundred patient ones of you they shall overcome two
hundred, and if there are a thousand they shall overcome two
thousand by Allah's permission... "

"...fight the polytheists all together as they fight you all
together... "

"...when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the
necks until when you have overcome them, then make prisoners, and
afterwards either set them free as a favor or let them ransom until
the war terminates "

"Be not fainthearted then; and invite not the infidels to peace when
ye have the upper hand: for God is with you, and will not defraud
you of the recompense of your works... "

" ...surely from among your wives and your children there is an
enemy to you; therefore beware of them"

"So obey not the unbelievers and fight strenuously with them in many
a strenuous fight. "